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Story:Kings of Strife/Part 17
Part Seventeen Like sweltering heat from the mouth of a furnace, breathing down onto him constantly and without pause, the air from every direction burned Vikcent Hyusei down to his very core. ‘I should have expected this,’ he thought for the thousandth time as he shuffled through the dark sands of the Mirage Desert. No matter how many times he scolded himself, the air didn’t grow any less hot; the ground grew no less forgiving; his sweat became no less irritating. ‘I’ve become weak. I lived in Nneoh all my life, and I’m letting a little heat get to me?’ As hesitant as Vik was to accept it, he had to admit that the heat of his tropical home country was completely different from the oppression that the Mirage Desert heaped upon his flesh. The Desert was directly in the middle of the Inusian continent, far from any rivers, lakes, or shores. There was no moisture here, no humidity and no life. Even the surrounding borderlands of the desert were dry and lifeless; only cracked yellow ground and dry grasses poked up from the earth, and even this crumbled into sand as one went deeper and deeper into the center of the Desert. First frigid, breathless Mount Gulg – then empty, dark North Norzaven – now the deathly, subjugating Mirage Desert. Vik had thoughtlessly plunged into both without a thought on what his body could handle. ‘I really am a fool, father.’ At some point during his endless shuffling, Vik realized that he actually missed the freezing cold of Mount Gulg. ‘At least there, I could look down and see the clouds and earth beneath me. And when the sun rose and set, the sky was magnificent.’ Now when Vik looked down he saw yellow sameness, and the sky was either bright white with glaring sunlight, or completely black without any stars. There was no sunrise or sunset here; the light disappeared within minutes, and reappeared just as quickly, almost unnaturally. “I'm just chasing myths. Legends, even.” He breathlessly talked to himself while wiping off some sweat from his forehead. He squinted into the horizon, staring the sun down as it hung high in the sky. The atmosphere seemed to undulate underneath the heat of the massive sphere. “A Tower in the middle of the desert. Yeah, right…” Vik was a fool and he knew it. A fool who was simply walking towards his death. “Search out the Tower,” Cidolas had said to Vik as she started to leave with Silverius, back in Empiria. “You will find what was left behind, and we will soon join you.” She had said there was a Crystal there, hidden in the middle of the Desert, and Vik believed her. He had been walking for days, now. The sun had risen and set more than once, and Vik languished within his own journey, burning and freezing and burning again. ‘I wonder if this is what being immortal feels like,’ the Nneonian wondered more than once. ‘Living and dying only to live again, when the sun rises. With a new skin.’ Hope was what kept him going. His compass constantly changed directions, so he long ago abandoned it. His rations were beginning to run out, and he had absolutely no money left. He had heard nothing from Silverius or Cidolas, who were supposed to come meet him in the Desert somehow with the third Hero in tow. He was lost, alone, and likely stranded – hope was all that woke Vik up and put him down to sleep again. ‘What if I die here?’ Vik shook his head with a dry mouth. He had forbidden himself from thinking about that, in case the thought drove him to lose his motivation or will to keep moving. It was not his time to die, not yet – not when he hadn’t avenged his comrades, or seen his family in months. Not when he still felt so guilty for all of his mistakes. ‘I can’t hesitate. I won’t hesitate. I can’t let everyone down again.’ All of this was his fault, after losing his Crystal and being unable to fight back against the traitorous Hasey – so Vik had to atone, and regain his strength. ‘Forgiveness. I want them to forgive me.’ Walking alone through the Mirage Desert for days had given Vik plenty of time to think, and while he spent hours at a time in a sort of empty, vegetative state – not thinking, not looking, just walking and breathing – he had plenty of time to think on his own. He analyzed the scheme that Hasey, the Serpent Knight, had laid in waiting for him the moment he started towards Mount Gulg. He reflected on what exactly inspired him to leave Nneoh and fight for justice and peace in the first place. He looked back on exactly what made him feel so mentally turbulent and determined at the same time, and he concluded that he wanted to be forgiven. ‘Mother… Friends… I just want all of them to forgive me.’ And this was the ultimate way for him to achieve that. Who could fault him for actions done in the name of survival, justice, and world peace? Did the means really justify the ends at that point? Vik knew that the answer was no, and that when all was said and done, he would be forgiven and loved again, as long as he did not fail. That night, when he had stood in place and was unable to fight back against the Black Knight – when he let his friends and comrades perish – Vik made a choice. The wrong one. ‘I’ll sweat for the rest of my life if I have to, if I can be forgiven for that night.’ “So I’m not going to die, not here and not anywhere else,” he continued through cracked lips for the fifth time in hours. With a pained swallow of spit, Vik reached down to his cantine and brought a drop of water to his lips. The bottle was getting light, and he could no longer hear the sloshing of fluids within it. He would be out of water very soon. “And then…” ‘Shit,’ Vik hissed in his mind. ‘I’m talking to myself again.’ Being alone and isolated for such a long time, without end, had influenced him to speak to himslf, not unlike when he was on Mount Gulg. Grueling journeys brought out his worst habits. He looked up to the sky, absently, and noticed that the sun had set. Darkness permeated the sky ceaselessly, like an ocean or wild abyss, only growing deeper and more intimidating with perspective. As if occurring in a second, Vik shivered, most of the heat around him having vanished within seconds. Realistically, it had probably happened over a long course of time, but Vik had been so absorbed within his own thoughts and turmoil that he had barely noticed it. ‘Or maybe the sun really set that fast?’ Not for the first time, Vik played with the idea that the sprawling wasteland was named the Mirage Desert for a reason. Was the sun really setting and rising in minutes? Could the temperature really change that quickly and abruptly? Or had he been fooled by an illusion from the moment he entered the desert days ago, if he really had been there for days? The chance of such a situation happening seemed incredibly far-fetched, too far-fetched – but Vik had seen worse, and lived through much and more. ‘Bright glowing eyes… Sharp knives controlled like snakes… Corpses moving and attacking.’ Ouroboros had shown him all, and he had a feeling there was more than he ever thought possible, right beneath the carefully perpetuated exterior of the world. Vik shivered again, and contemplated sleeping. There were no animals or dangers around the desert that he had to hide from, but just being out in the desert at night was enough to fill Vik with unease. Something about the starless night and the endless expanse of dark flat land, in every direction, felt unnatural to Vik, as if the world was not real and he was stuck in a dream. No matter how long he walked, it felt as if he would never reach the Tower, let alone the other side of the Desert, and being surrounded by darkness as he wandered made it no better. Thus, he usually slept as soon as he noticed the night, using the long butt of his rifle to dig out a diagonal hole in the sand beneath him to create a small hole of sorts. Curling his body into it, holding his pack and his limbs close to his chest with his head sticking out and resting on the pile of sand that was once in the ground, Vik was able to conserve much of his body heat and sleep somewhat peacefully. He always woke within a few hours, before the sun rose, and he would spend the last hours of darkness moving slowly, working all of the kinks out of his rested joints. But now something told him time was running out. A brief breeze had touched him just a little earlier, drifting cold fingers around his bare shoulders, and had driven Vik to amble just a little bit faster, as if driven by the elements. Now that he looked back on the event, he realized that it was the first time he had felt the winds blow since entering the Desert. ‘Things are changing. I can’t stop, not now.’ What if this was some sort of sign? He knew not what it meant that a sudden breeze had touched him right before the sun set, here miles away from the nearest gale, but Vik did not want to discount it. ‘I might be getting closer. I can’t hesitate.’ So he kept parambulating, onward and onward, though a heavy cloak of nothingness had taken hold of all the world he could see. Soon the hours began to mix and melt together, and as he entered a determined state of mental emptiness, at the fringe of his mind he thought only of his mantra. “No hesitation. No hesitation.” Absently, without noticing, he whispered it to himself, as a spell or incantation of sorts. “No hesitation.” This was a new state for him. He could physically feel time passing, on and on and on, but he did not grow exhausted or tired at all. There was only determination, only focus and not an ounce of hesitation. He walked, feet dragging sand beneath him and leaving footsteps that did not fade, and he walked. The sun rose after a long, lonely night, and Vik kept walking, now with squinted eyes and sweat budding from his body once again. He walked, knowing his body was growing weak but ignoring any natural impulses through sheer willpower. ‘I will not hesitate. I will not choose wrong. I will succeed.’ His body screamed at him, and his limbs all burned, but he continued to walk, ignoring it all and drowning himself out with his own determination. After a while, his body fell silent, and he could hear the cries of exhaustion no more. Near the end of the next day, Vik fell to the ground. He landed on his face, hot sand mixing in his unkempt beard and welcoming his shocked, aching body. “No,” he mumbled to himself. “No, no, no. Not here. Not like this.” With a trembling hand he reached down to the cantine on his waist, but as he pulled it out of his belt, his hand convulsed from pain and he dropped the water bottle on the ground. Its top opened, and the little bit of water he had left spilled, sifting through the sand and sinking deeper, deeper, deeper. “No!” He screamed without a voice, his lips so dry that his tongue could no longer revitalize them. The water melted into the sand slowly, mocking him with its fate, and his own. With his wet, shaking hand curled into a fist, Vik slammed onto the dampened sand. ‘How could this have happened? Why now?’ He had been spurred on by a feeling that the end to his journey was looming, but this was not the ending he was envisioning. His food had run out as he walked during the night, and his water was in the ground beneath him. His body ached, but he knew that if he slept now in the day, he would awake without energy and covered in sweat. A nap would likely revitalize him somewhat, but without any food or water at all, his time left was limited. ‘This wasn’t the ending that I wanted!’ Cold tears melted down from his burning eyes, his body shaking from dehydration and frustrated sobs, and Vik felt himself fading away into his exhaustion. He woke soon after, vaguely, before falling right back into sleep. The Nneonian kept trying to resurface into consciousness, his body twitching and shaking far-off, but it was outside of his control. This was not the first time Vik felt powerless within his own skin, but he was terrified at the thought that it might be the last. What did he have to be proud of, that he could accept with a smile if this was really the beginning of his last moments? ‘I’ve relied on others for my entire life,’ he realized, his own thoughts echoing inside his head. Family, justice, acceptance, a fear of alienation and disappointment… ‘How pathetic,’ he said to himself as he languished within his own unresponding body. Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic… ‘It’s so hot…’ Vik was conscious again, and he sat up, bewildered. For just a moment he had felt nothing, a complete lack of thought and awareness, and now that he had returned to consciousness, that brief moment terrified him. The Nneonian shook his head with wide eyes and pushed himself off the ground, slowly, with sand grinding in his palms. How long had he been asleep? Vik’s body had the aching stiffness of a full night’s sleep, and he felt somewhat less weaker than he did before, but it did not feel like he was out for that long. “What’s going on?” he muttered, standing and dusting his hands off. A few uncomfortable grains of sand had stuck in his beard, and as he picked them out and scanned the landscape, Vik soon found himself pausing. What grabbed at Vik's attention was a hallucination, he knew immediately. ‘It has to be. This is impossible.’ The entire time he was meandering throughout the desert, the landscape had been uniformly empty, devoid of trees, hills, and hope. Now that he was awake again, that had changed. A single shimmering tree of green stood less than a mile ahead of him, and at its feet lay a tantalizing pool of blue. The oasis was surrounded by completely still air, and the green palm leaves of the tree danced on the beat of an invisible wind that did not reach Vik. Behind the oasis, far off in the distance and barely visible, a single tower stood, dark and adamant in the bleached white desert. Vik was completely awake now, renewed and filled with life and strength that betrayed the weakness of his body. Grabbing his discarded pack and rifle, he ran to the oasis, faltering and haphazardly throwing sand around his feet. “This can’t be real,” he bellowed breathlessly, “It can’t be!” ‘It’s not over yet!’ When finally he landed at the tree, Vik had fallen on his face three times. Sand pocked his shaggy, curly beard, and blood from his nose dripped down into his mouth, but the Nneonian could do nothing but smile and laugh. Once he arrived at the small, glistening pool in the midst of the desert, Vik dropped all of his belongings and kicked his boots off. First he soaked his face into the pool, cleaning the crust and sand out of his beard and skin before lovingly drinking the water profusely. He tasted some sand and dirt in the water from his face, but it did not matter; nothing could have tainted the miraculous fresh water that he had toiled in order to find. He sat there drinking for at least an hour, resting and allowing himself to grow in strength once again. Soon he was completely revitalized, and when he was sure that he needed no more water – he had filled his cantine and resecured its top – the Nneonian soaked his cramped, aching feet in the oasis. The water felt almost like an elixir, easing the pain in his joints and ensuring to Vik that he could do anything now, even walk for another eight more days in the desert of mirages. ‘This is no mirage. This is my reality.’ After soaking his feet, putting all of his clothes on once more, and standing with newfound strength, Vik glanced back to the tower standing at attention a mile away. It was much wider than he first thought, and it appeared to be constructed of an odd material that did not reflect a single beam of sunlight. Like the water beneath him, the tower shimmered unnaturally and teased him with the answers to his problems. He knew it was no mirage; the water was real, and the energy it gave him was tangible. So he knew the tower ahead of him was no mirage. If it was, he would have to immerse himself within illusions in order to find the truth of reality. It took him a mere ten minutes to confidently walk to the tower, refreshed and alive with bursting energy again, and with his luck he found what looked to be an entrance not far off to his right. What Vik did not expect was for the entrance to be open, its tall and ornately ornamented gates dented and forcibly ripped off to the side, as if a person had burst into the tower with a gigantic weapon and an even larger ambition. He was not the first one to arrive. When he saw that the tall gates, also made of the same unnatural stone as the rest of the tower, were scattered about near the entrance, Vik paused and swallowed with trepidation. He stepped towards the gaping and shadowed entrance to the tower, his body tense, and found that the top of the gate was still attached, somehow, to the rest of the tower. Resting above the entrance, it had an inscription engraved on it that seemed to be of Inusian script. Vik paused for but a moment to read the inscription, his eyes squinting in the sunlight. “WHAT WAS LOST IS NOW FOUND; WHAT WAS AN ILLUSION IS NOW MADE REALITY,” it read. “BEFORE YOU, OH LOST AND BLIND TRAVELLER, STANDS THE TOWER OF MIRAGES. WHAT WAS FOUND BY KING LAXYN WILL NEVER BE LOST AGAIN. FROM THE TOP OF THIS TOWER ALL THE WORLD IS VISIBLE, AND ALL THE WORLD BELONGS TO THE KING, FOREVER AND EVER.” ...End of Part Seventeen. <- Previous Page; Rescue Arc | Main Page | Next Page ->